A flaw in OpenSSH and Dropbear allows local users to elevate their privileges via scp.

Background

OpenSSH is a free application suite consisting of server and clients that replace tools like telnet, rlogin, rcp and ftp with more secure versions offering additional functionality. Dropbear is an SSH server and client designed with a small memory footprint that includes OpenSSH scp code.

To copy from a local filesystem to another local filesystem, scp constructs a command line using 'cp' which is then executed via system(). Josh Bressers discovered that special characters are not escaped by scp, but are simply passed to the shell.

Impact

By tricking other users or applications to use scp on maliciously crafted filenames, a local attacker user can execute arbitrary commands with the rights of the user running scp.